Sony beat PS3 hacker GeoHotz in court, vows never to buy a Sony product again

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GeoHotz, the infamous rapper-turned-hacker who has given Sony’s law team the run around these past few months due to his incessant PS3 hacking, has finally caved in.

Sony’s law teams took the hacker right the way to court, which ruled he was barred from “unauthorized access to any Sony product under the law”, and will land himself in even hotter water if he violates a Sony product’s terms of service, “whether or not Hotz has accepted such agreement or terms of use”.

Potentially, GeoHotz could be liable to pay as much as $250,000 worth of damages if he tinkers with Sony’s toys again, though he has escaped a monetary penalty this time around.

As a result GeoHotz (real name George Hotz) has vowed to boycott Sony products for the rest of his days.

“I am joining the SONY boycott,” Hotz blogged this week. “I will never purchase another SONY product. I encourage you to do the same, and if you bought something SONY recently, return it.”

“Basically if Sony does bad things, you better not call them out, or they’ll attempt to make your life hell,” Hotz concluded.

Anon, think before you type.
Geo has not had anything to do with blocking any sony sites.
Also, it’s not that he had any problems with Sony, it was Sony who had a problem with what Geo was doing with his own property. And he has every right to do what ever he wants with his own stuff.
Sony has unskilled developers who can not secure their data and got caught on it, then just used money to tie Geo in court.. can not really blaim the guy for not wanting to support Sony.
Sony really does need to grow up and be more professional, for one, learn to keep your PSN up and stop wasting time with lawsuits.

Anonymous

23rd April 2011 at 4:24 pm

He had/has no right to being doing this just because he doesn’t like what they are doing. it is very much illegal to block websites or take them down. if you do not like Sony go protest outside of there building or face the jail time

Jiraiya

14th April 2011 at 1:15 pm

Whats with the biased reporting? Don’t care for facts?
He was never proven as doing anything wrong.
The Settlement contains no admission of guilt.

Sony gave in because THEY didn’t think they could win, George took the settlement because he isn’t rich and wanted his life back.

This sham of an article is nothing more than fuel for the fire of prejudice, I am ashamed to be a reader of sites that publish garbage such as this.

You just made up lies and printed them,
“Sony’s law teams took the hacker right the way to court, which ruled he was barred from “unauthorized access to any Sony product under the law””

NOT TRUE> The court, and judge did NO SUCH THING.
Nothing was “ruled” by any court or judge.
George just agreed to stop hacking Sony products on the condition that they stopped trying to ruin his life with expensive lawsuits.

This article is misleading and fact free. Pathetic.

none

13th April 2011 at 6:03 pm

What exactly are your problems? Courts have already ruled it is legal to jailbreak any mobile phone. Do you really think there’s a HUGE difference between that and a gaming console? /I’m glad I live in the United States, where just because I CAN pirate something I automatically get branded as a pirate. Guilty until proven innocent, right? /sarcasm.
Grow up. Whatever your personal opinions of Hotz is, (and I’m not really sure I like him either) it’s completely absurd to say that I can’t do whatever I want with a *singular instance* of software I own. Hotz didn’t steal anything, he didn’t pirate anything, he didn’t encourage others to pirate anything, he didn’t even sign a terms of service! He simply made possible some illegal activity while in the process of enabling a completely legitimate action and teaching others to perform a completely legitimate action. And, however much you make fun of the kiddies who want to run homebrew software, there’s nothing wrong with it.
If the DMCA was applied to anything outside of the software industry, everyone would be up in arms about it (you can’t teach someone else how to lockpick, you can’t teach people chemistry in school, for crying out loud even cellphones can be used to trigger bombs.)
But apparently no one cares about the right of property in the software field, or at least they don’t believe that the end user could possibly have any.

Necromantik

13th April 2011 at 2:46 pm

Lol, boycotting Sony products?!? But the little runt said he’d be the first in line for the xperia play.. What’s the matter, scared? 😉

And anyway Sony didn’t start this he did.. Claiming to be protecting our rights when it was his work on hacking the hypervisor that got otherOS taken anyway. Idiot.

AnonMan

13th April 2011 at 2:32 pm

i have to agree with the other comments

Owlman

13th April 2011 at 1:45 pm

Cry some more Hotz. Can’t go breaking the law and then act like the victim, that stuff don’t work on me.

Anonymous

13th April 2011 at 1:43 pm

This douche didn’t call anyone out on anything. Posting the proverbial keys to PS3 security online did nothing other than declare open season for hacking the PS3. All he succeeded in doing was indirectly making some titles almost unplayable online for the average user who doesn’t give a flying monkey about jailbreaking their PS3 or ‘sticking it to the man’.

Perhaps he’s so naive that he honestly thought that just because he doesn’t condone piracy and malicious hacking that nobody else on the internet does. Maybe he thought that he was benefitting PS3 users around the world by publicising the unfair policies of Sony and providing people with a way around them.

The fact is that consoles have ALWAYS had strict policies about what the user can and cannot do with the hardware. You may own the physical chips and drives but the software on those chips and drives remains the property of the manufacturer just like buying a CD or (legally) downloading an mp3 doesn’t mean YOU own the song, you have paid for the right to play the song.

At the end of the day this was more than likely an ego trip for a kid that feels the need for attention.